Lazer Beam Kit

	Reviewed by: JohnL. Manufacturer: FlexiGlow Price: TBA.

Introduction.

Flexiglow are certainly making their presence known in the computer Lighting and Modding community. With the rave reviews about their Bubble Lights and Cold Cathodes I was left wondering 'What's Next'??? Well when a little Fed-Ex man knocks on my door at 9 in the morning I'm not the happiest of people. But this morning I got 'The Knock' struggled out of bed and opened the door looking like a ogre ( Editorial: "more like a sprite" Titch ). Can't remember if I was dressed or not.... OHH MY EYES!!! But I put the kettle on and grabbed a pair of trousers, after examining the parcel, I found a couple of sets of Lights courtesy of Dan from FlexiGlow. After receiving a Thank you email from him not a day before I was shocked at the speedy delivery to say the least. After the cats had a sniff and I had a cup of Caffeine, I was ready to find out what goodies I was sent this time.

"Flexiglow is a company that I had not heard of until now. They were founded in 1998 and are based in both Hong Kong and Australia. They specialize in fancy lighting effects for all sectors of the industry from automobiles to model builders and sign displays to advertising. They are now making a move into the PC modding field with a range of awe inspiring products. If you visit their site, it does not take much to conclude that if they transfer just a modicum of their talents to the PC world, then we are in for a treat."from Bubble Light Review.

Technical Babble.

• Features Easy adjustable translucent housing
• Self adhesive mounting
• Focal Beam Magnifier
• Connects to 12V in Car , PC, Boat etc..
• Connects to component options listed below
• Available in Blue, Red, Green, White and Ultra Violet

Optional Extras

• Sonic driver with ON/OFF and sensitivity adjuster.
• Three way Driver
• Cigarette Jack

Open the Bubble.

The Light kits come housed in a retail bubble, nicely presented and easy to display. The kit is ready assembled and ready to use, simply plug into a 4pin molex and let there be light.

All the Flexiglow products we have seen thus far have a standard 2pin plug, that allows them to be used with the broad range of extras like the sonic driver or 3 way driver to name a couple. The molex power source is detachable to allow use of these products.

The electronic driver is a solid sealed small black box with Velcro pad for mounting. Attached to the electronic driver is an in-line 3 way switch that has ON/OFF/FLASH. This allows you to set your Lazer lights to either be permanently ON or FLASH. Coupled with some of the other Flexiglow products you can create a veritable Disco effect with just a few products.

The electronic driver cabling comes sealed which could make wire routing difficult, but with lots and lots of spare cable its got plenty of slack to play with. There are 3 off-shoots from the electronic driver again with mountains of 'Speaker' style wire, one for each of the 3 Lazer lights. The lights themselves are mountable cylinders with adjustable feet to give you total control and adaptability when lighting.

Each light houses a Super bright Lazer LED with what looks like a fixed focusing lens. The light produced from a single LED light at a distance of 1 meter from the object produced a strong vibrant color, but it still a very focused beam. I have placed a CD for size reference.

Light me up

The 3 lights together produce a blinding amount of light, exact specs aren't available but they appear to be much greater than my 2200mcd LEDs that I have.

I placed a single set of these into a FULL tower Lian-Li PC-70, they were positioned along the edge of the motherboard tray and shone onto the motherboard and PCI Cards.

The lighting effect I got from the 3 lights was excellent, they highlighted the various components perfectly. My Zalman heatsink fan does mar some of the CPU lighting, but with the flower cooler lighted up it looks awesome.

They are a lot bolder than the standard Blue cold cathode as you can see from the picture.

Due to the nature of Photography and my poor skills it is very difficult to show accurately the full effect that these light produce. With a couple of sets of the lights in the case it was like Xmas all over again. Here's a few pictures taken in daylight and at night with 6 lazer lights in, remember that's only 2 kits.....

Conclusions

Well I got to say that the wow factor of the lazer lights is high. The mod-potential is also very high. A few minor niggles, but nothing that would stop the novice or even me from over coming the issues. With a mixture of colors and the Lazer Beam Kits could become a must have item on the avid Modders wish list.

Can I recommend them? Certainly, but as with all lighting find out what you want to light and then use the best method to do it. Cathodes will still remain the main source of FLOOD lighting until someone invents something else. But for highlights and even in great numbers these could rival the old workhorse.

Pros:

• Good solid construction
• positional lights
• Bright
• Focus beam
• BLUE not aqua as often is the case.

Cons:

• Electronic driver wiring not removable
• To much wire even for a Full Tower Case.

So even with a few minor issue about the Lazer Beam Kits, I can still be proud to give them a Silver Award and for sheer potential / future mod use a ModFather Award as well.

Well done to Flexiglow on another top product, and special thanks to Dan for providing the review samples.

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